I have been wanting to do this for literally years now, but I don't think I could convince the vast majority of my friends to move onto anything together, let alone Signal. Most of them are non-technical, and it just holds no appeal. Plus, because they would basically just be installing it just to talk to me, they would probably nearly never be online or check their messages, so I'd almost never get to talk to them again.

I basically don't use Facebook (the website), but I am still stuck using their Messenger for communication with most of my friends. That said, Facebook's events system is still the best that I've seen. If it was stand-alone, I would probably delete the rest of FB, and just keep that part. Nothing else on Facebook adds any value to my experience. Nothing you need to be logged in for, at least.

I guess that is what it comes down to. I am now missing a lot of low quality interactions with friends and family. I do still SMS with folks. It was mostly about Facebook. I took the time to plan out how to stay in touch with each and every one of my contacts I cared about or thought would care about me. It is a good question -- what will you really be missing? How did the thinkers of generations gone by live without pervasive and instant contact with friends and family. Did they still foster deep and meaningful relationships? Can we still do that now without a tool like Facebook or Twitter.

You could unfollow everyone. i did this a few months back and haven't missed it at all. way less distraction.

You are basically saying your friends were a distraction. Which is a little rude (UK perspective).

heh, you know - you're not wrong :) It may appear rude, but it's not meant to be - it's just a way of flipping the interaction from a push to a pull. i can always visit a friend's page to see what they've been up to.

In the US, many FB'ers friend anyone. I had this girl I worshiped years ago. She finally seemed interested, on a chance encounter. She said, "I'll friend you?" Blah, blah, etc.

I got home, and looked her up. She had 550 friends. I can't figure out if I don't like her now because she rebuffed me years ago, or she has 550 FB friends. And yes--I took into account she might be insecure now, and filled with self-doubt; which would explain why she needs to have a following.

All I know is I don't feel the same way about her as I did before I saw her FB page though. Weird?

I think you're reading too much into it. I barely use facebook and have a couple hundred friends. I'll accept an invite from anyone I know and like, regardless of how well I know them. Do that for a decade, or however long FB's been around, and you build up quite a few.

It's very tempting to friend anyone. But because of Facebook's tendency to then cross pollinate posts via comments etc. I'm more reluctant to do so (privacy of others). I post to Facebook almost as if I'd post in public. But it's different for everyone. I know there are settings and ways to make circles, but it seems a faff.

Have you considered using the "Facebook News Feed Eradicator"? It does what the name suggests it does, and let's you focus on events and private messages.

IIRC you can deactivate FB but still use their IM

I miss Facebook, or rather the circle of friends on it. I'm ideologically opposed to the idea of one big centralised thing like Facebook - but as an actual tool it's pretty spiffy.

It's so nice to see such rare and nuanced discussion on HN, declaring that one has deleted their Facebook account; a refreshing and entirely not beat to death reminder indeed.

Heh, alright. Well, if it is news some famous Russian guy unfollowed his network activity helps other HNers have a tiny bit more information about what others are doing. I will elaborate some though. I am in information security and have been reforming my overall footprint online. I have been making an effort to cut down on the analytics I generate for other companies and keep my data and activity on the Internet to myself. I have migrated away from Mac and Windows as primary operating systems due to analytics and ongoing downward trend for Apple (Sierra was not a good update from a privacy perspective).

Perhaps I am simplifying too much, but this problem does not seem complex -- but we have collectively made it complicated. People need to claw back their privacy one app, and website at a time. I have also made efforts to begin educating my family.

I have also connected my entire home Internet to a full time VPN end point that tunnels everything out. The VPN endpoint IP is changed every day at night (Trail of Bits -- Algo, cron and a bash script, and a good amount of battle with IPSec to make the gateway work). No more ISP super tracking cookies in my home. Everyone that is on the home network goes through is so it is easy for everyone to use (nothing changed on my home network from the end user perspective).

Consistent usage of privoxy. Casual browsing is done using Chrome in a docker container that is removed when chrome closes.

There are other things, but most of that has been over the last 6 months. It is a good start... But there are still a lot of obvious leaks. I have also been steering friends and family towards paid service with no advertising over anything where they are the "product".